Now it is clear from these considerations, and from the vast mass of information which is gradually being accumulated on the subject, that not only the arresting force of Christianity but also its toleration has assisted in the preservation of pre-Christian belief and custom. But the preservation has been in fragments only. The system which supported the older faith and might, if it had been allowed a natural growth, have produced a newer religion of its own, was completely shattered. It left no preservative force except that of tradition, the traditional instinct to do what has always been done, to believe what has always been believed. Pre-Christian belief and custom has thus become isolated beliefs and customs in survival. It has been broken up into innumerable fragments of unequal character, and containing unequal elements. It has been forced back into secret action wherever Christianity was wholly antagonistic, and hence primitive public worship has tended to become local worship, or household worship, or even personal worship, while all such worship which is not the authorised Church worship has tended to become superstition. Where Christianity was not wholly antagonistic, it absorbed rites, customs, and even beliefs, and these primitive survivals have taken their place in the evolution of Christian doctrine, and thus become lost to the students of Celtic and Teutonic antiquities. But even so, there are discoverable points where the dividing line between non-Christian and Christian belief has not been obliterated by the process of absorption. In all cases it is the duty of the student to note the stage of arrested development in the primitive rite, custom, or belief, whether it be caused by antagonism or by absorption. It is at this point, indeed, that the history of the survival begins. It is here that we have to turn from the polity, the religion, or cultus of a people to the belief, practices, or superstition of that portion of our nation which has not shared its progress from tribesmen to citizens, from paganism to Christianity, from vain imaginings to science and philosophy. It is from this point we have to turn from the dignity of courts, the doings of armies, and the results of commerce, to the doings, sayings, and ideas of the peasantry who cannot read, and who have depended upon tradition for all, or almost all, they know outside the formalities of law and Church. FOOTNOTES: [444] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Bury), iii. 214-15. [445] _Royal Irish Academy_, viii. 258; _Brit. Arch. Assoc._ (Gloucester volume), 62. [446] "The Story of the Ere Dwellers," Morris, _Saga Library_, ii. 8. [447] Camden, _Britannia_, s.v. "Ireland." [448] Henderson, _Folklore of Northern Counties_, 16. [449] Glas, _Canary Islands_, 148. [450] Betham, _Gael and Cymbri_, pp. 236-8. [451] _Decline and Fall_, iii. p. 214 (edit. Bury).